PUBG Review: Technical​ Flawed But Tremendously​​ fun

Beginning as a mod for ARMA 2, Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds quickly rose in popularity with its stand only version being made available on steam back in March 2017. With its steady rise in popularity after its release, thanks to many popular YouTubers playing the game on their channels, the developer of the game, PUBG Corporation, decided to port the game to Xbox One as a timed exclusive.

The creator of the game, Brendan Greene, said that he was influenced by movies such as Battle Royale and Hunger Games when creating the concept of PUBG. The game begins with every player sitting on an airplane which slowly flies over a large island, giving the players a chance to jump out of the plane and parachute down at any time. From there, the players must search every location for weapons, ammo, armor, and other supplies with the goal of being the last person alive.

With the island being rather large the game puts in a mechanic to keep all players moving towards each other to keep the match moving at a relatively quick pace. When the match begins, there is a larger white circle that indicates what the safe zone is, and if the player is outside the safe zone after a certain amount of time, they will slowly start to lose health until they either reach the safe zone or die.

This safe zone mechanic helps to keep the game moving while at the same time allowing for players to explore the entire map. The game allows the player to team up with up to four friends or strangers, or the player can choose to go it alone. This is one of the rare examples of a multiplayer game where it is just as fun to play by yourself as it is with friends, and on a team or your own, the matches never feel unbalanced, so everyone has an equal chance of winning.

PUBG is a lot of fun to play, but there are still several technical issues that keep the game from being perfect. For one, the game is far from pretty to look at with several textures and effects popping in later than they should. Because of this when the game first loads up many of the houses look like they are made of play doe until the game’s textures pop in.

On top of visual problems, there are several moments where the frame rate of the game drops out or lags at the worst times causing the player to lose the match. Thankfully though the developers are continually updating the game to make it run better while taking player feedback into account.

While some people may not be able to look past the technical flaws of PUBG, I highly recommend everyone at least give the game a chance. Whether you decide to gather some friends and form a team or go it alone, you’ll want to get on that plane again and again.